Why Use Content Blocks?

The short answer? They can make your life easier.

With content blocks, you can easily and sustainably build groups of content and reuse them across your site or even on multiple sites. CHSSWeb’s content blocks consist of a title, an optional text area, and optional associated content items. You can associate a block with multiple pages on multiple sites. When you update that block, it changes wherever it appears. When you update a piece of content associated with that content block, that item is updated wherever it appears.

Content blocks can contain documents, links, pages, people, the titles of people on sites, the titles of people on programs, and programs. Long-time CHSSWeb users are familiar with resource groups, which were an earlier version of content blocks. Resource groups could contain documents, pages, and links. To include another content type in a group, users had to create a link then associate that link with the group.

For instance, if you wanted to create a list that included your PhD program, you would first create a link pointing to that PhD program, then associate that link with the group, then put that group on a page. If that PhD program link changed, the link in the resource group would be broken. That is, objectively, convoluted and confusing.

With content blocks you associate the program itself with the group. If the name or the URL for the program changes, the group will still contain the correct information wherever it appears. The same applies to the other kinds of content you can put into blocks.

Building a content block is a bit more time-consuming than just typing a title and a series of links into a field on a page. But once you have built a block, it is reusable, versatile, and very easy to maintain. This is a powerful tool and it is worth learning how to use it.

Example: A Block With No Associated Content

For Spring 2021 graduation, we needed to place information on multiple pages directing students to other pages and sites for more information and providing a CHSS email in case they had questions. We created a content block, placed the information and an attractive image in the block's content area, then put that block onto five different pages.

Example: Blocks With Associated Content

These blocks contain pages and links. The block in the sidebar contains the current student page on Mason Korea, a link to Patriot Web, a link to the catalog, and so forth. The block at the bottom of the page contains three pages on the Mason Korea site. That block also uses its text area to offer additional information, while the one on the right does not use that feature.